You just have to.

You have to tell him. The sooner, the better. He may leave, he may not. But if he ever finds out on his own, the combination of infidelity and covert lying will definitely drive him away.

Good luck to your baby, your husband, and you. You're all gonna need it.

Imagine keeping this secret for 40-50 years. The stress alone. You must tell him.

"Fate has dealt you a difficult hand"? Hey, Lady, fate had nothing to do with it.

You are a straight up sociopath.

You know, the moron who didn't think his wife would mind if he fucked around even though she was pregnant with his 2nd child.

Cary, WTF is your problem? Have you no moral foundation? Is every idiot's situation they got themselves into just another reason for you to wax poetic on reheated pablum? Or is it just that saying, "You stupid fuck, try telling the truth. Accept responsibility for your behavior!" fits on a 3" by 5" card instead of in your soon-to-be-published book?

Man, this column fits right is with Salon.com's latest new look. You can keep putting lipstick on a pig, but it's still just an ugly fucking pig.

I know this seems like the end of the world, but I think you'll be surprised at your husband's reaction. (If in fact the baby is your ex's.) Cary is correct- this is your husband's baby. Tell him your fears now, have the tests, and have him sign the birth certificate regardless of the outcome. If he refuses, get a divorce lawyer. He would not be the man you want as the father of your child anyway. Good luck to you and your family, and congrats!

Then you can see how shitty your words read.

If the baby is not genetically his, it's not his. Period. Unless you allow me to implant the egg of my wife in your womb, and I doubt that's going to meet with your approval.

And it's not a matter of whether she 'wants him to be the father of her child.' She obviously wasn't concerned about the issue when she was off pissing all over her wedding vows. She's still not interested in doing the right thing by her husband, because the stupid shit feels the urge to write to some advice columnist to solve her self-created problem.

You probably call yourself a feminist. People like you give feminism a bad name.

What's good for the gander also must hold true for the goose.

It could be worse. The husband could not know anything about the affair at all and could be blissfully going around like nothing was ever wrong.

But chances are pretty good that if the dates are even close to what the LW told her husband (and it sounds like it was close), it's crossed his mind that the kid has the ex's DNA rather than his own.

This is how I'd recommend phrasing it: "Look, there's something I have to tell you, and if you want to divorce me over this, I can't say I blame you. It was a shitty thing of me to do, I did it because I was scared and confused and not because I wanted to hurt you, and it's been haunting me ever since I did it. But I wasn't quite straight with you over the dates I gave you. I think the baby could possibly be X's."

That's the truth -- it could be X's. Without a DNA test there's no way to be absolutely certain, even if there is a genetic aberration both X and the baby have in common.

But LW shouldn't be surprised if DH isn't surprised.

A dishonest, betraying coward who is willing to let both her husband and her child live a terrible lie until the day when it will inevitably blow up in their faces and wreak horrific damage, all because she doesn't want the responsibility of single motherhood! What a lucky little tyke!

oh, and if your husband is not the father, IMHO, bio-dad deserves to know he's got a little tyke running around in the world. Also, he deserves "first refusal" if adoption is seriously considered. he may suprise you. As millions of divorced parents learn, that ex never really goes away when there's a kid involved.

Your child deserves loving parents. Regardless of how "magnanimous" your husband's response might be (or not), your past difficulties as a couple and your own CURRENT difficulties in handling this do not bode well. It's a lot of baggage. (Obviously, therapy should be considered: solo, couples, crisis, etc. -- your health care provider may be able to recommend someone knowledgeable and "sensitive". Foster care may also be an option, as well as "parking" the kid with a relative while you get your shit together.)

This has to cease being your "private" secret ... deal with it.

In my friend's religious tradition they have this practice where upon getting engaged you ask a couple of friends to meet with you once a month each separately and then together to talk about the relationship. It's a form of engagement counseling only very personal since it involves a close friend. In any case, this sets up the relationship so that the married couple have a history with getting a mediator into their relationship to help build it or in this case put it back together. It helps to get problems out into the open before they have a chance to boil over. It helps to make sure all the joys and bonds that brought you together are acknowledged and celebrated.

I suggest that the LW try to find this type of support for her marriage immediately. There are many ways people find this sort of support. We pay marriage and family therapists, we have rabbis, priests, ministers, we have friends and siblings.

The LW should start building the support community for both herself and her husband. If the marriage fails at least both partners will have a better network to help them recover and move forward as better parents.